


Confidence

by TolkienGirl



Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [203]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Cooking, Gen, Interlude, Wachiwi, on the other side of the lake, she isn't exactly an ofc but shhh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:27:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23268439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: I have thought of him, and me, and who we are.
Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [203]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1300685
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	Confidence

Wachiwi twists a scrap of yellow thread in her fingers. There is a wind, cold and unnamed, calling from the north.

“He didn’t tell you?”

“Nothing that he wouldn’t tell his sister,” she answers Aredhel. “I am not his confidant.”

Saying that—using a word she first heard from Wister, mispronounced—is an admission, maybe. It says, _I have thought of him, and me, and who we are._

But Aredhel doesn’t question her. She nods her thanks, or her farewell, and leaves the cookfire behind. It is not the only one burning; evening meals are being stewed and roasted all over the camp. Beren had brought back a string of hares some hours ago.

If Fingon still lives, he will not eat enough. Even if he brought enough rations with him, he is that kind of senseless: running like a deer fleeing, blind but for its desire to leap.

Yet, he is not afraid. Wachiwi reflects on the stories she likes to tell. Stories she has told _him_. This fearlessness would make him a hunter, a wolf maybe, but there, too, the story fails—

For he is not cruel.

Nothing for it, but to turn the world another way in her hands. Wachiwi thinks of cattle again, fondly reminded of their trusting eyes. She thinks of their strength, and their patience, and the way they are deeply stubborn.

Sometimes, they run for no reason at all.

This stew-pot does not belong to her, but she reaches for the wooden spoon thrust through the loop in its heavy black lid all the same. Someone must tend to these things.

The yellow thread falls from her hand to her trousers, from her trousers to the ground.

The wind takes it.

She feeds the mouths that are nearest.

(He didn’t tell her anything.)


End file.
